Such hilarity! Cheering and laughing and dancing and big warm-looking bonfires. A great big feast where they emptied every storeroom. Days, it seemed to go on. People occasionally stumbled onto the ramparts waving drink cups, shouting ‘King Marith! Hail to the king!’ One girl flashed her nipples at them, yelled they’d see a lot more where that came from if they came over to the side of the true king. Dead drunk: she slipped and fell off the wall. It was a long drop, the outer wall of the fortress of Malth Salene. The bloke who found her body did indeed see a whole lot more.
King Illyn the actual/ex true king’s soldiers, meanwhile, scraped up meat slurry with shovels and poured it onto funeral pyres. Days, it seemed to go on. Tobias’s arms ached. His back ached. The pools of dead people never ended. Then they broke for dinner and it was roast pork and whichever fucker thought roast pork was a good idea right now should be disembowelled. He sat staring at it trying to eat it without breathing in. Until a seagull swooped down and crapped in it. Bloody bird shit dripped down his arm and onto his food.
Gnashed his teeth at it. Oh hell yeah.
Tense days passed, dusk and dawn and dusk and dawn again. The party in Malth Salene finally ended. The keep before them fell silent, men were occasionally glimpsed walking its ramparts, hoisting red banners, cheering their king. Tobias’s few surviving tent-mates sat and tried to pretend they weren’t all thinking ‘King Marith’ and shivering with something and simultaneously almost pissing themselves with terror and creaming their breeches with lust. Fresh troops and siege engines arrived by fast ship from Malth Elelane, trundled up the cliff road. They all watched them, awestruck. A thousand soldiers. A hundred horses. Seven trebuchets. A whole load of big, carefully handled barrels. One old bloke in fancy robes.
Banefire and mage fire. The men were halfway between terror and climax at the thought of that, too.
The men were a fine lot. His squad. Not that he thought of them as that. Maerc and Brand and Mish and Acoll. Mish was two heartbeats away from killing himself. ‘I trained and trained to be a soldier,’ the kid kept muttering under his breath. Brand and Maerc spent their time trying not to kill each other. San spent his time doing something nobody wanted to ask about in his tent. Tobias mostly sat about feeling sick.
Good lads. Handy with the shovels. Kept their armour polished to a mirror shine. Didn’t even seem too bothered by the smell of roast pig.
Join King Illyn’s army! Gods and demons, he bloody missed Alxine and Rate.
Finally, at noon on the sixth day, trumpets sounded and the men were drawn up in files close to the funeral mound.
‘Here we go, then,’ said Maerc. ‘Meat slurry time again. Hope you’ve all been sharpening your swords.’
The king trotted up on his warhorse, Prince Tiothlyn by his side. He’d aged ten years in the last few days. Prince Tiothlyn beside him also looked changed, his face worn and grey. Never seen real bloodshed before, Tobias would guess. Like poor Mish.
That wasn’t a battle, he kept telling Mish. That was … I don’t know what that was. But definitely not a battle. Not even berserk barbarians wacked on horse milk and dodgy mushrooms tend to fight quite like … whatever that was.
Fun, something in him kept saying. It was fun.
Then he’d go away and almost puke with shame at himself.
‘My loyal soldiers,’ Illyn began. Poor bastard, thought Tobias. Knows he’s beaten. You don’t start a speech to your troops like that unless you already know you’re totally screwed. ‘King Marith’, the whisper had gone around the men that morning in eager voices. A tone in the voices that made the skin crawl even as it made the heart beat.
‘My loyal soldiers. What has happened here on this field cannot be allowed to stand unavenged. The dead demand it of us. Honour demands it of us. And so I say to you now: this is war. We will crush this place and all within it. The pretender and all those who support him will die. The dead demand it. Our honour demands it. In Amrath’s name, I swear this will be so.’
Coughing. Shifting of men’s bodies. Muttering in the ranks. Then one of the big nobs raised his sword and shouted ‘King Illyn!’ in a weak voice. The men around him stamped and cheered half-heartedly. After a moment Tobias joined in. Mostly out of pity for the poor bloke. The trumpet blew the call to form battle lines. Slightly more rousing than the lame-duck stutter that had just passed for a speech.
And that’s it then. Meat slurry time again.
The king stomped off into his command tent. Big fancy silk thing, dark red with gold trim in case someone, somewhere forgot for one moment who the Altrersyr were descended from. Like everything around the battlefield, it was covered in bloody seagull shit. Didn’t show quite so badly on the red, at least. You stupid fool, Tobias thought, watching him go. He was your son. He had so much in him. Even I can see that. Now he’s … whatever it is he is. Your murderer, for one. A whole lot of us did things that led up to this, and you did more than most. Couldn’t you just have told him you were sorry? Had a pint and a man-to-man chat and made up?
The soldiers formed up in columns. Tobias was somehow humorously close to the front. A group of particularly hard-core guys shuffled forwards with a battering ram. The trumpets sounded. The war drums began to beat.
Oh fucking fucking fuck, thought Tobias. What am I doing here? Why did this seem a good idea? Why didn’t I just leave everything well alone?
King Marith. I want to kill him. I have to kill him. He needs killing. He can’t be allowed to live. That’s why I’m here.
Yeah?
King Marith … The skin crawled but the heart beat.
The trumpets sounded. The trebuchets heaved into action. A crash, a scream and a spout of fire as the first round hit Malth Salene’s walls. The battering ram began to hammer against the gates. The trebuchets loosed again and the ground shook. A section of wall dissolved in green liquid fire. Molten fire. Molten stonework. Molten men.
A voice screamed, ‘Take the fortress! Destroy the traitors! Surrender or die in the name of the king!’
The soldiers of King Illyn pressed forwards. A burst of mage fire caught the gatehouse. White flames, as well as the green.
See it through. See it through. Kill the boy.
King Marith. Ah, gods …
The trebuchets loosed again. Shattering the walls. Running, running with fire. Eating away the gilded stone.
The gates of Malth Elelane burst open. A troop of horsemen burst out. At their head a silver figure. Shining. Blazing. His sword flashed rainbows. His cloak was red. Shadows circled over him.
King Marith.
The most beautiful thing in the world.
Tobias’s mouth fell open. The men at the battering ram went down beneath the charge. A spurt of blood. King Marith’s sword flashed like lightning. Rainbows. Stars. Pure perfect silver light. The attack stopped in mid-sword stroke. A last trebuchet missile shattering on the keep walls. Then a long pause and silence. The army of King Illyn staring. The beautiful figure. King Marith! Amrath! Amrath come again!
Marith’s horse reared. He cut the men around him down. They did nothing. Stared at him.
Amrath! Amrath! Amrath returned!